A program aimed at helping Indigenous people in remote areas gain jobs could lose funding as the government moves to overhaul the program they have labelled “a comprehensive failure”.
The Remote Jobs and Communities Program (RJCP), initiated by Labor, has helped 618 people in the past 15 months get a job, but Indigenous affairs minister Nigel Scullion has argued it is a failure because in the 2013-14 financial year only 277 jobseekers found jobs for longer than six months.
Scullion says the government is going to announce changes to the program but has yet to go into any specifics about what the changes could entail.
Asked if he would guarantee that the program – costing $1.5bn over five years – would retain the same amount of funding originally assigned to it, Scullion responded: “The government has reformed funding arrangements for Indigenous-specific job programs under the Indigenous Advancement Strategy so that they are focused on real, long-term job outcomes.”
Scullion said the jobs which have been obtained in the past three months are due to changes the government made to the program last year.
“It’s clear that applying mainstream-style employment models in remote areas that have limited or no real labour markets has been a comprehensive failure,” he said.
“RJCP was poorly designed and implemented and demonstrates why there was a need for the government to instigate the Forrest Review to refocus effort on ensuring training leads to real job outcomes.”
Scullion said service providers have not been effective at getting people in the bush into jobs or participating in activities and “sit-down money” has returned as the norm.
The shadow minister for Indigenous affairs, Shayne Neumann, said the opposition was open to changes to the scheme but he had not received a briefing from the government on the performance of the program.
“We do welcome any genuine review of the jobs program that is aimed at increasing jobs opportunity but not if it’s simply a pretext for cutting funding,” he said.
“I don’t know whether this is a thought bubble or a serious proposal.”
Neumann said it was not clear what the government was proposing to do with the program and work for the dole was not a real plan to get people into jobs.
He said he was not convinced the government had any more than “vague notions” about what to do about Indigenous employment and if the program was failing there could be more than one reason for it.
“It’s not clear if there is a flaw in the design, there could just as easily be a flaw in the implementation,” he said.
“It’s a possibility, there has been inaction, inactivity and idleness within the portfolio. We are willing to take a bipartisan approach, the door is open but he hasn’t consulted me. I’d like to get a briefing.”
Neumann said if there was a serious problem in the program then the opposition and the government needed to work together constructively to fix it.
Scullion said there were more issues with the program than just what he called “dismal” job numbers pointing to figures showing 30% of job seekers were engaged in “structured mutual obligation activities” such as work for the dole programs.
The government is due to deliver its verdict on the Forrest Review, which was commissioned for proposals on how to boost Indigenous employment and training, in the coming weeks.
